Book Review: The Forgotten Victim: A History of the Civilian; Lieber's Code and the Laws of War; Humanity in Warfare
Abstract
BOOK REVIEWS Richard Shelly Hartigan, The Forgotten Victim: A History of the Civilian. Precedent Publishing, 1982. Pp. xi+ 173. $15.95, cloth. Lieber's Code and the Laws of War. Precedent Publishing, 1983. Pp vii+ 157. $17.95, cloth. Geoffrey F.A. Best, Humanity in Warfare. Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1980. Pp. xi+401. $30.00, cloth. $10.00, paper (1982). Richard Hartigan, a political philosopher at Northern Illinois Univer- sity, and Geoffrey Best, a historian at Sussex University, have recently published studies of the laws of warfare that come to rather different conclusions regarding efforts to provide for humanitarian conduct dur- ing war. Hartigan is the more pessimistic of the two, perhaps because he is best at describing the medieval and early modern eras. In The Forgotten Victim, he offers excellent discussions of revolutionary significance to the jus ad bellum of the views of Saint Augustine, the role of Saint Thomas Aquinas and such postglossators as Lucas de Penna, Francisco de Vitoria, and Francisco Suarez. In a companion volume, Lieber's Code and the Laws of War, he claims (quite reasonably) that Francis Lieber's codification of the customs of war for the Union Army in 1863 precipitated similar codes in Europe and led to formal